Sex Work

by Frédérique Delacoste

  In reading off our backs I came across the following: “Cleis Press is now accepting contributions to an anthology by women who have worked or are working in the sex industry.” My stomach jumped. A book from a feminist press by women who may have shared my feelings and experiences. I could read their writings. I could submit an article, too! Finally, a release from that sense of isolation. Cleis Press has recognized this as an important area for feminist discourse.

  Then I read on: “massage parlors, encounter studios, escort services, pornography, street prostitution, as well as other areas of sex work.” Another clench of the stomach as I saw that topless dancing wasn’t in there. Neither was nude modeling. Maybe my experiences weren’t really “sex industry.” I couldn’t waste people’s time with my writing because what I had done was too “tame” to be legitimate. And anyway, my experience didn’t really count because I was a college student; I wasn’t tied to it; I was really above it all, not part of it.

  Then I affirmed, yes, I had been part of the sex industry. My denial was part of what needed to be examined. I needed to share my experiences if for no other reason than to find other women who felt the same. In our own experience we hold the keys to deeper understanding of the oppression of women in the world. Silence. Guilt. Isolation. I needed to participate in breaking through these three barriers.

  The summer I was to be twenty-one, my boyfriend and I got an apartment together, a daring counter-culture move for me in 1966. In the back of our duplex lived a woman who worked as a nude model and topless dancer. To me she was exotic, exciting, extremely independent and powerful. I wanted the same assurance she expressed about the sexual attractiveness of her body, her allure to men. By the end of the summer, I was working as a topless dancer on Broadway in San Francisco, and as a nude model for an art professor/photographer. The money was lots better than I’d been making as a bookkeeper’s assistant and countergirl.

  Working in the sex industry, I experienced many different, often contradictory feelings, some of which I’ve never fully acknowledged before. My expressed feelings at the time were total ease and a kind of sarcastic humor about how ridiculous men were if I would make twenty-five dollars a night for showing my tits for thirty minutes max. At the topless club, I spent my time off stage studying, or sitting at the bar feeling superior to the poor jerks who patronized the place. Occasionally, I visited the snake dancer and her snakes upstairs.

  Tasha, the snake dancer, was small breasted, athletic and trim. She was my idol. At the time I looked down on women who injected silicon to increase their breast size. I never considered dieting to maintain my five foot seven frame at one hundred and ten pounds. I was proud of my athletic, small breasted body in such a sea of breast-mania. Somehow it tied in with my independence, my stubborn refusal to see myself as an exploited woman, a down-and-outer like the other “topless co-eds.” Having a more masculine figure was the final hold out against victim status. What I never did see was that my body type was in vogue at that time, emphasizing my look of youth and innocence which was a real turn-on to men. They were probably not seeing the independent, powerful, sexy butch I wanted myself to be.

  The independence was definitely tied to money. I felt I’d solved the dilemma of how to go to school and earn a living, too. Twenty-five dollars a night as a topless dancer. Ten dollars an hour as a model. I took one job for moving rather than still pictures but it was too sleazy for me. The guy was really creepy. He did all my make-up and then had me dress in black lace underwear. He filmed fifteen minutes of me taking off stockings. The pay was fantastic but I couldn’t maintain my illusion of the proud, independent woman in such circumstances. I stuck with “art” photography.

  The issue of power interests me a lot. Having a presence and physical body which men found sexually attractive was important to my self-esteem. Having men pay to get turned on by me was an affirmation of my sexual power. At times I would dance for a certain man, trying to make him uncomfortable by flaunting my body at him. I really liked to win the amateur contests. Men could want and need me. I wouldn’t fall into the traditional female role of pining after men, trying to ensnare them with various schemes. I’d just be so sexy I could have any man I wanted. Although, of course, I didn’t want any of them. What I never saw was that in basing my self worth on men’s desire I was far from developing a true sense of worth based on self love.

  I see this false sense of power as one way internalized oppression keeps us down. For years I isolated myself from other women and put my considerable energies into men. I wanted to feel on a par with the most important, powerful people. Being sexually desired was the fix I needed to feel in control, to feel powerful. Now I see how this worked against the recognition of my own real oppression as a woman. I see that wanting men to want you sexually is what men want.

  There has been so much silence surrounding this issue. As feminists we have learned to talk about how sex is taken from us by force, manipulation, coercion, and whatever else conveys “taking.” We do not discuss how we find giving it away necessary to our self-esteem. Shame seems to be a factor. Although I thought I wasn’t ashamed of my sex industry jobs I never told my mother. I told her I smoked dope and took drugs, that I had sex with my boy friends, but I didn’t want to upset her needlessly by telling her I showed my bare body to men for money.

  Somehow we need to find a way to talk about what we do of our own volition. Possibly we can come to see our participation not as collaboration but as — what? Self-illusion? Making it in the system? Finding a way to feel good about being a woman given the few options offered? I want to understand the process whereby I refused to buy into the lies of wifehood, self-sacrifice and living for a man, but never saw that the mirror-image lies in buying into the patriarchal version of independence — power and not needing a man.

  It makes me angry when feminists lump all sex industry workers into a pile of poor, exploited, brainwashed victims without minds of their own. I was a young woman who needed to earn a living and chose to pursue the highest paying, least demanding jobs I knew of. I was successful. I felt good about myself. Today I have different values and a clearer understanding of my position as a woman in the world, but this doesn’t invalidate my past experience. What I can do today is examine those unexpressed, unacknowledged feelings from the past, the feelings which co-existed with my previously discussed feelings of power, independence, sexiness and ease. This is the hardest part, the home of those barriers of silence, guilt and isolation.

  I never felt a part of my work world. I had no friends, talked with few of my co-workers, and never interacted with any of them outside work. To some degree I felt superior: I was a college student doing this temporarily. But in truth, I didn’t know how to relate to people other than sexually or intellectually. To have sexual passion enter my workplace would have been too scary. It would have threatened my “tough-girl-don’t-touch” stance. I also played on my “sweet-young-thing” looks, another image which would have been hard to to maintain in a sexual relationship. I did find a couple of men to discuss “intellectual” issues with, existentialism or the Free Speech Movement, but the North Beach sex industry was quite different from the university. I know now that to maintain my positive outlook and self-esteem in that environment I had to remove myself from my deeper feelings and essentially wall myself off.

  Guilt and shame were certainly among those walled off feelings. I worked in sleazy places with people I had no respect for. Of course, I didn’t really know the people, but because of their work I saw them as failures, as society’s dregs. With few exceptions I felt superior to all around me. This was how I protected myself from the shame and guilt of offering myself visually to men, doing what I had been raised to think was socially degenerate. Somehow, it seems to me that being a sex worker was a way of denying the feelings which were tied to sex at an unconscious level. This is still an open question for me. Topless dancing, nude modeling were never neutral experiences. Despite my avowed ease there was alw
ays a certain stridency, a feeling of daring which must have been the cover for fear and vulnerability. I was a lost young girl co-existing with a powerful, independent woman.

  Guilt and isolation contributed to the silence. My isolation kept me from talking with the other workers, learning how they felt, exploring our roles as sex workers. And although I didn’t keep my work a secret I didn’t talk about it a lot. I was really terrified my parents would find out and I simply didn’t know how I would handle that. Embarrassment was the closest I got to naming that confusing well of emotions which rose up at the thought of my parents judgment. Embarrassment is what rises up today in trying to talk openly about my sex worker experiences. I feel like a naughty little girl, half confessing to, half bragging about, some misdeed. What is the well-spring of this embarrassment? Another very open question for me.

  People have always been shocked to learn that a nice girl like me could have been a sex industry worker. “I never would have thought. . .” For years I found a kind of defiant pleasure in their astonishment. Now I want to shout “Why not? What are your stupid stereotypes that deny my experience?” But I realize that I shared in the denial, felt as if my work was not the true me but a part I was playing. Now I know it was truly a part of me. I’m learning to know that part concurrent with becoming aware of other aspects of my inner self. In time I may be able to integrate all my parts, to understand how I got here. This article is only the beginning, raising far more questions than it answers. But in overcoming the silence and isolation it’s a very important first step.

  Coming Out of Denial

  Sharon Kaiser

  Fourteen or fifteen years ago, for about three years, I worked as a porno actress and did a little prostitution. I rarely told anyone, and when I did, I played it down or lied about it. Then a few years ago, one of the few friends who knew introduced me to Margo St. James, who in turn introduced me to COYOTE.

  I came out of the closet, and began to reclaim a part of me I denied and saw as bad. For the first time I had support for that part of my life, that part of me.

  I got into pornography as a fluke. I had been a struggling actress for years, and had decided to get on the other side of the camera, into film production. I got an opportunity to learn some of the craft by filming hard core pornos. I did learn behind-the-camera craft, and it did lead to more straight film jobs, but in the meantime, one thing led to another and I did a lot of work in front of the camera as well. I called it experimenting; it was the late sixties, early seventies, and experimenting was “in.”

  I’m not going to say it was great. . .it wasn’t; it wasn’t bad either. I was dealing with a stigma, something that had been pounded into my head as bad and dirty. So no matter what I called it, no matter how I did it, or what I did (behind or in front of the camera), I was bad. I don’t know how to explain it. It’s not the act that makes it bad; the people were clean and respectful, but the stigma made it bad.

  I dealt with it by denial. Later I would deal with prostitution the same way.

  It’s funny, I’ve been a lesbian all my life, and the stigma surrounding homosexuality in the middle sixties when I came out was never even half as bad as it was around being a prostitute or doing pornography. I dated women who did prostitution in corporations, and the denial was so great that we never told each other what we were doing. We lied. . . mostly to ourselves.

  I never called myself a prostitute; I never called myself a porno actress either. I was a filmmaker. I didn’t work the streets, I didn’t work every day, my customers were repeats, referrals. I called them my friends... it was an easy lie. They didn’t pay me, I would tell myself; they helped me out with my rent and bills, and they would land me film jobs. And I liked them; you’re never a prostitute when you like them. Besides, I was a lesbian, and I was experimenting, and it was safe... I could get out or stop anytime I wanted. . I was on top.

  In those days I wore make-up and sexy dresses or shorts with slits going up my hips. I loved dressing, and in those days I loved performing. When I stopped I went just the opposite. I began wearing jeans and plaid shirts with t-shirts, and quit wearing make-up. And this was my costume until three years ago.

  The women in COYOTE reminded me of how much I enjoyed dressing up and how much I enjoyed wearing make-up. . . how much I enjoyed looking and being sexy. They reminded me of this whole part of me I had denied and had hoped was dead.

  Oppression does funny things. The people to whom I most feared revealing my history were lesbians. They don’t necessarily see prostitution and pornography as immoral. . .but they are revolted. And I think this is because of the way we’ve been oppressed as homosexuals; we’ve been conditioned to view sex acts between members of the same sex as revolting and immoral. Because we’ve been hurt in that way, we in turn hurt in the same way.

  So I had nowhere to go. I’d heard of COYOTE, but because I’d done so much denial for all these years I didn’t see myself as an ex-prostitute, or even as an ex-porno actress.

  When I finally went to this group, for the first time I met women who proudly called themselves prostitutes. I met women who supported each other and supported me. I had known only one woman when I was working who called herself a prostitute, and I couldn’t even come out to her then.

  My whole life has changed as a result of meeting these women and working with them. If I had had that support then, so many things would have been different. I wouldn’t have had to think I was bad. I would have loved myself a little more.

  The Continuing Saga of Scarlot Harlot VI

  Carol Leigh

  Brrrring. . Brrrring. . .

  Wow! Maybe it’s an activist prostitute, calling to help me plan the revolution.

  “Hi, honey. What ya up to?”

  Oh, shit. It’s Frank. Should I or shouldn’t I? I am so immersed. I don’t feel like working. I just get in this really sensitive space. I’m an artist! I shouldn’t have to. And he’s really an effort. But I need the money.

  “Oh, I’m great darling. I was just hanging around. Why don’t you come over. I’d love it.”

  “Be right there.” He’s happy.

  “Just give me a half hour to get dressed and clean my apartment.”

  “Don’t bother for me.”

  “No, I have to. See ya.”

  I straighten up my desk, make my bed, shower and set my hair with electric rollers. Whore Magic. That would be a great brand name, I think as I smear my lips and cheeks with Wild Cherry.

  I should start a business and sell cosmetics, oils and sex toys by Whore Magic. I’d make a fortune. I lament as I choose matching bra and garters and a lowcut dress — sadly, because I know that tail is more profitable than retail. I choose music and light and incense. The doorbell rings. Frank appears in tennis drag (the alibi to his wife) but this is not a matter of love.

  We kiss and hug. I drag him into the bath and wash him with ritualistic tenderness, sponging and sucking and cooing. I drag him back to bed and proceed with the oral sex. Maybe he’ll just come like this and leave real fast so I can get back to my art and politics. But I tease to extend his pleasure so that he’ll come back again. Hurry up, hurry up, I think as my mouth and fingers linger.

  “What about sixty-nine?” he asks, as if I might refuse him.

  “Mmmmm. Oh yes, yes,” I whisper. Shit. I don’t want to get all involved. I don’t feel like getting off. I never feel like it, but I’d rather come than fake it and the clients in my call girl network expect us to act like we like it. I wish I worked turnover like in a brothel or massage parlor. Regulars are so much pressure, but I work this way to avoid police.

  “It’s great you love to fuck and suck so much. You really like it, don’t you!” he moans to my crotch.

  “Oh, yeah, I do etcetera. . .”

  “Do you like my cock?”

  “Oh, yeah, I do etcetera. . .” Oh, c’mon, I think. Now, if sex workers had status as actresses, I wouldn’t suffer from the tension of these lies. “I like it. Please fu
ck me.”

  “I can tell you really do. I think the women should enjoy it. I know you really do. That’s what turns me on.”

  “Oh, yeah. I love it. I love it.” I say. What I hate the most is that these guys think we’re sex-crazed. They think we’re aching for a hot time in the sack. I don’t know why he keeps asking. I certainly respond passionately enough. Frank comes. He rolls off and hugs me.

  “How many times did you come?” he asks.

  “Oh, yeah, I don’t know. I lost count.”

  Frank’s a nice guy and a good lover, but my mind is somewhere else. My call girl friends agree: sex work is a lot easier when you see a lot of men. When one sees three or four men a day for several days, one enters a sexually-open state. But I don’t have time for that, so I find the work irritating.

  I know! I should write a book for tricks about how we really feel about these encounters. I could interview all my friends. Ah, when whores start telling the truth and lifting the burden of these lies we will become so powerful and the future of prostitution will be so rosy. . .

  Dream Turned Nightmare

  Cecelia Wardlaw

  I was born forty-eight years ago to a Roman Catholic and alcoholic family. I am a recovering addict, and I recently learned that I was an incest victim.

  As I was growing up, I remember pouring over any books which offered me information about sex. My mother hid the medical books I was reading, so I retreated to dictionaries and encyclopedias which I found at the library. As a young teenager in the 1950’s, I tried unsuccessfully to seduce the neighborhood boys. They, too, were Roman Catholics, and Roman Catholics in the era of “Father Knows Best” saved themselves for marriage. In 1960, I was a virgin bride and hot as hell. My husband could not match my sexual appetite, and I thought the problem was due to some fault of mine. I began reading again. I found sex manuals, which were relatively new then, but my husband said they gave me “too many ideas.” When articles about massage parlors first appeared in magazines, I was fascinated. I fantasized about what it would be like to be a prostitute, but thought my chances of ever becoming one were slim. Little did I know.